More of a blather-let

[firecat]

snippy also asked me:

Should I keep trying with my plants, or resign myself to theft?

(For background, see her post on the subject.)

If someone repeatedly stole my plants, I'm sure I'd give up eventually, or plant poison ivy; but from this distance I find myself thinking "Someone who steals plants must really need them. Maybe I will continue to provide them with plants and consider it a sort of spiritual gift to the universe, a declaration of my faith that everything is connected and therefore what does a plant-stealer good also does me good."

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I like your take on it, but the poison ivy idea also makes me giggle. :)

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

What a wonderfully harmonious idea!

My own not-quite-so-harmonious idea is to leave her little notes saying "Try this one today, it's nearly ripe for picking!" or "Don't steal this one yet please, I'm saving it for my Aunt Mavis." Bet that would stop her right quick...

[syzygy.livejournal.com]

She could also just grow plants like mint for example that spread energetically to replace the loss...

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about what sort of plants are getting stolen? (I didn't see that info in her post.) Perhaps another sort of plant would be less appealing?

I don't know that plant stealing is such a problem here, but I do remember reading about rampant political sign removal. The key to prevention seems to be to smear the signposts with shit. I wonder if this would work for the plants, too?

[firecat]

Smearing the signs with shit would seem to send a double message about the endorsement involved.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Sign*posts*. Not the sign.:)

[snippy]

The first time, they stole a basil and a dahlia. The plants were about six to eight inches high; the dahlia had half a dozen or more buds ready to bloom.

The second time, just a dahlia.

It's a flower bed. What is less appealing? The bed is done in hot pink, orange, and yellow. That is, the flowering plants are all in those colors.

[krasota.livejournal.com]

some folks who steal plants are acting out of compulsion... there've been local cases of klepto gardeners who have lots of containers in their homes/yards/porches--and all were stolen from other gardeners.

but since these are *in the ground*, i think the thief is more likely to think these things out. i'd be likely to plant something thorny. to be quite honest, i have to skimp and save to buy the plants i buy. i have to forego some things in order to buy containers, dirt, etc. i put a lot of effort into my plants and if they were to get stolen, i'd be upset. there's no cosmic gift--i was growing those plants for the birds, butterflies, and for MYSELF, not for some slacker who lives down the street.

[snippy]

I do have apple mint in that bed. I wanted something flowering, too. I'm getting the house ready to sell (next spring) and a flower bed is very attractive in the curb-appeal sense.

[snippy]

I'm afraid the karmic lesson here looks to me like "if I invest myself in something important to me, it gets taken away." It's very discouraging.

The thing is, I can't afford to keep putting new plants in that bed. The first time around I spent over $150 between plants and soil and fertilizer, and that's not including the money I paid to have the bed cleaned out (after I tried and exhausted myself for very little cleared space). The replacement plants were about $10. I can do that a couple of times, but not if it were to happen every other weekend.

I have stopped caring, which makes me sad. I don't go look to see what's blooming--I'm afraid more plants will be missing and I can't afford to be emotionally invested and then experience more loss.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I don't know how important the color scheme is to you, and I don't know where you live. But you might want to think about daylilies or coleus. You can find the former in orange and yellow, and the latter in hot pink and yellow--maybe orange, too. Or cannas--mine are yellow and orangy red.

Stealing basil really SUCKS!!!! (I know some people love dahlias; I have no attachment to them.)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid the karmic lesson here looks to me like "if I invest myself in something important to me, it gets taken away." It's very discouraging.

I'm so sorry. I've had several plants dug up--a lavender plant I had for several years, several different kinds of lantana, some bluebonnets. But I suspect animals, not humans. In the front, now, I only have salvia (there's some pink salvia, I think; mine is all red) and cannas, because those will grow. I'm thinking of buying some more veronica for groundcover, so I won't have to mow around the salvia, but haven't gotten to it yet.

I love gardening, and I'm sorry you're having such a bad experience.

[snippy]

I do have 3 daylilies.

The bed has one basil, three pink heather, a Japanese holly, three orange nasturtiums, two hot pink daylilies and a Stella d'Oro (yellow) daylily, some pale yellow marigolds, and it *had* two deep pink and one orange dahlia. (It now has only one pink dahlia.)

I originally had two basil, only one was stolen. The holes were carefully covered with the soil next to them. I have a mental picture of somebody walking along in the dark with a rootball in each hand! And did I mention there's a streetlight on a power pole that sticks out of the bed?

Hmmm

[firecat]

The couple that owned my house before I bought it had 100s of plants. I wonder if they were klepto gardeners.

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

poison ivy

plant theft

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

nobody who steals dahlias really "needs" them. i sorta like your karmic viewpoint, but i think i'd just be pissed instead. i'd probably install a hidden webcam to sniff out who's doing it, and then confront them. if they really "need" the plants, i'd be happy to give them some, but no stealing the ones i've lavished attention on, and look forward to seeing bloom.

when i grew a lot of plants from seedlings, i would set out the ones i had no room for with a sign that people could take them. i'm all for sharing, but not for stealing.

i might replant with a sign asking the thief to please leave those alone because it's so disappointing to walk out and find my plants gone. if zie has any heart, maybe that'll do something.

poison ivy! *grin*. my nasty side really likes that. it also likes coating the newly planted balls with cayenne pepper.

Re: Hmmm

[opalmirror.livejournal.com]

Maybe they had dealt with the local klepto gardeners and had developed an unmanaged habit of buying extra plants. This formed a nice stasis for quite a while, with a steady number of plants present in the beds. Then, a few years before you moved in, the klepto gardener went on vacation. Your predecessors were used to buying extra plants for the klepto and so the stasis was broken. They dutifully crammed more and more plants into the space they had like some sort of crazed phytophilic automata.

Re: Hmmm

[firecat]

*giggle*

Fortunately, they took about 90% of the plants with them, which still left me with about a couple dozen pots and a bunch of out of control vines. But no matter, after a few years with no water, they all died. Darwinian Gardening at its best.